


and i hear your ship is coming in

by teatrolley



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, Family Dynamics, M/M, POV Mickey Milkovich, Post-Season/Series 10, this is basically just 14k on mickey's thoughts on ian and family and shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:33:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teatrolley/pseuds/teatrolley
Summary: He comes back into Mickey's life like a shooting star, but that's just how it beginsOR: They’re married now and Mickey has a lot of new feelings. On a Thursday, Svetlana writes him back
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Mickey Milkovich & The Gallaghers, Mickey Milkovich & Yevgeny MIlkovich
Comments: 84
Kudos: 537





	and i hear your ship is coming in

**Author's Note:**

> wow hello, entirely new fandom. i'm one of those people who are here after season 10 but who also haven't watched anything beyond season 5 except for the mickey and ian scenes and who's therefore been relying on the wiki quite a lot. don't sue me if you catch a mistake
> 
> rated mature for swearing and references to canon-typical violence and 3x06
> 
> title is from anchor by novo amor. enjoy!

He comes back into Mickey's life like a shooting star. A memory turned into a video on a phone, bright orange fire and bright manic eyes. Bright yellow jumpsuit and then there he is. Always so goddamn easy to forgive.

*

In the beginning, Mickey will lie and stare at the bottom of the top bunk bed. His arms will be covered in goosebumps from the burning cold, and sometimes that reminds him of Ian as a freckled kid. They're almost gone now, but Ian is back, and Mickey spends his nights just listening to his breaths. Later, once they’re both out, he sits on Ian’s childhood bed and touches his familiar sheets and wonders how he got there. Wonders, in a sort of marveling way, if it isn’t still a little too good to be true.

Since last time, Ian’s got new meds. He did in prison too, and Mickey counted the number of them and paid attention in the morning to make sure that Ian swallowed, but he didn’t ask questions. That didn’t really work out last time anyway, and if Ian was recently out there blowing up a van, it doesn’t seem like he’s reached a consistent point with them. Now Mickey finds the bottles in the bathroom that the family shares and takes note of the names, before he sits on his phone on the bed and looks them up. As a partner, it’s something he needs to know, even if it will earn him a fight when Ian finds out. But then again, Ian’s always known how to surprise him.

Three weeks after the wedding, Ian comes home from his tri-monthly lithium blood-test and hands Mickey a paper as he joins him on the couch.

“What’s this?” Mickey asks.

“So you don’t steal it out of the trash while I sleep.”

When he turns it around, he sees it. All those little graphs and everything that they mean. It’s been a long time since he stopped denying when Ian does something that warms his chest.

“Is everything okay?” he asks instead.

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuck the paper then.”

He throws it away and Ian smiles as Mickey leans in and kisses him, but he’s quick to pull away. To take the paper and hand it back.

“Sweet gesture,” he says. “Read it anyway.”

So he does, and it’s fine, like Ian said. The graphs show the normal intervals and Ian’s results, right in there in the middle like everything’s perfect. Sometimes these days it feels like it is.

“Looks all good,” he says.

“Like I said.”

But Ian’s kissing him back, hands on his cheeks and legs coming over to sneak across his lap, the two of them on the couch like Ian still gets daily training in dancing on people’s laps, but better because he doesn’t. Better because it’s only Mickey’s hands on his hips up under his shirt, the house blessedly quiet enough that he doesn’t have to worry about scarring the eyes on some Gallagher kid.

“I missed you today,” Ian says.

“Well, fuck. Let’s go upstairs then.”

And Ian laughs as they do. As they bump into the stairwell on the way up, kissing like a couple of teenagers who aren’t afraid to get caught. Touching each other like they just remembered they got rings on their fingers now, which Mickey does every hour. In the room, Ian manhandles him onto the bed in the way he likes, and they laugh together about it because they have that kind of freedom now.

“Easy, Army,” Mickey says, so Ian pins his hands above his head and Mickey loves it.

“Yeah? I thought you liked it hard?”

“That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you.”

He can feel it against his thigh. Ian lets him go to flip him off, and Mickey laughs and wrestles him, and then they’re rolling around like they did when they were kids. The afternoon sun is shining through the blinds, making patterns on Ian’s chest, and Mickey thinks there's something nice about the mix of dark with light.

*

Despite the years that have passed, the Gallaghers welcome him back like it’s still that time those years ago, when Mickey went and yelled up a storm about them being family. Family by extension, because Ian was. _Partner, lover_ , and that too. It would be naïve to claim that they’ve ever really loved him, but Mickey is beginning to wonder if long years of knowing each other is not the same thing. He remembers Liam as a baby anyway, and Debbie as a kid. He remembers Lip as the college teen who drove the car down to pick up Ian and the baby. He remembers him saying that Mickey did well enough.

They’re Ian’s family anyway, and you can’t live in this neighborhood and not know the importance of that. It’s why he would never kick up a fuss about them staying here in the house, even when they’ve got matching rings on their fingers and might deserve a honeymoon. Maybe because of that. In his world you don’t forget the way they all came together to last-minute-plan the event when his own dad fucked it up. When you grow up like he did, you’re always aware of what you owe.

So that’s why he’s here then. In the Gallagher kitchen on a nine-AM Sunday, making toast for him and Ian, while Ian sits with Franny and tries to get her to eat and Lip sits with Fred, bouncing him on his lap. He’s taken to coming around each morning like this, passing the house on his morning walk which allows Tami to shower and become human again. Mickey knows more about that whole situation than he really needs to, but he also remembers it. Baby smell. The scramble for someone to look after him. The weight of the kid that seemed to get lighter as he fell asleep.

After he’s finished the toast, he cuts up some fruit for Franny too, and then some for Liam, who comes down in a towel from his shower, so much older than Mickey used to remember him.

“I have to go soon,” he says.

“Fuck you gotta be on a Sunday?”

“My paper round,” Liam says, like Mickey’s supposed to know that. He can tell, from the corner of his eyes, that Ian’s smiling about it.

“Well, no one’s sitting by their door for that. Eat some breakfast first, man.”

“Most important meal of the day,” Ian chimes in, but in a way that Mickey can tell is meant to tease him. He glares at him, but it’s hard to do when Ian’s sitting with a child on his lap and a sleep-worn t-shirt on, and when Ian is grinning at him like this. So happy in that way he looks when he can tell that Mickey’s trying for him. 

"What?" he says, to Mickey's glare, so Mickey joins him at the table without bringing his toast. It only makes him smile more.

“Please, Liam?” he says, and Liam fetches the second plate before he sits down too.

“Traitor,” Mickey says, but Ian leans in and kisses him gently on his cheek.

“Sorry to ruin your street-cred,” he says.

“I’m still a convicted felon.”

“Yeah, so am I. Can still be a domestic bitch.”

“Sandy should have shut her mouth.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Ian says. And Mickey knows he’s not. He’s always been like this, even when no-one but the two of them knew. Fucking Pride march and everything, but more than that. Open to crying when he cried and laughing when he laughed, so unlike Mickey who had to fight for every inch towards it. But he did fight and he’s here now, Ian’s hand to the back of his neck in front of his family.

“No,” he says. “Neither am I.”

And then he looks at Liam.

“Also, prison is not cool.”

Ian laughs and squeezes his neck as Lip chuckles and Liam just looks at him, unimpressed.

“You’re a little late with that lesson,” he says.

“Better listen hard then, Private School. It’s never too late to learn.”

Just like a lot of other things have turned out not to be.

*

Him and Ian have always been running around each other in circles before. Into each other like a heavy crash, away and then past and then over before it was back to each other again. Like a photograph ripped apart and glued together many times, fragile in the middle where the rips overlap. Mickey has always been aware of the temporary nature of it. At first, when they were kids, he almost wanted it to end, so scared of what he’d be forced to face eventually if it didn’t. Then, when Ian was back but so very different, he wanted it to stay intact but almost knew that it wouldn’t. _This is it_ , he says it when it happens. The words of someone who's not surprised. Who's already been wondering if it's dumber to love someone or to tell them that you do.

These days Mickey tries to think of the other things though, and it’s almost easy to do. He knew it from the moment that Ian agreed to come to Mexico, even if that ended too. Knew, with such clarity, that there would always be a part of Ian that would belong just to him. A part that would never be very good at letting Mickey go.

He gets back the mall security job and Ian works as an EMT. The do-gooder PO is back, and this time it’s good to be having the same one. He talks to Mickey about dreams and also about school, and those two things don’t overlap for him, but they do for Ian, who listens to Mickey’s account of their meeting in silence until he just smiles.

“Could be good,” he says, and apparently that’s all. Mickey would be annoyed, except he knows that it’s belief in him, the same way it was that summer after he got out of juvie the first time. He lets it be instead.

He thinks about the future though. He has a certain fondness for Debbie, born when she was a kid, but he doesn’t think anyone wants to leave her to fend for both Franny, Liam and Carl, especially not after her brief stint in jail for the Julia thing. So they’ll stay here and they’ll keep putting money away for a rainy day whenever they have the chance. Ian is dreaming of buying a family car, and Mickey can see the use in that. It pans out ahead of him and with the wedding band on his finger, it’s starting to all make sense. But he still lies awake at night sometimes and thinks of a different life; so starkly similar except a little to the left.

He’s heard some of the story from Ian, but mostly from Debbie and Carl. The throuple thing, whatever the fuck. The fake rich marriage, the green card, the cross-country flight. The kid.

He’s at the Alibi one afternoon while Ian is working his EMT job, nursing a beer rather slowly until he works up the nerve to ask. If anyone has her details still, wouldn’t it be Kev? So he tries and stumbles and twists around and finally gets it out.

“Oh yeah, the kid,” Kevin says, always a subtle king. “I got the name and address of the guy anyway. I’ll figure it out and drop by the house.”

“Not if it’s trouble.”

“Oh no, man. Sons do good with a daddy, you know.” Great. “How old is he now?”

“Six, I guess.”

“A big guy. I’ll get it to you. Tonight, I promise.”

“In private, okay?”

That’s important to ask. He hasn’t talked to Ian yet, and that’s not by accident. He wants kids, badly, and if Mickey brought it up that he’s even thinking about the kid then Ian would take over and have them play parents from next week. That’s not where Mickey is. Not when he acknowledges how it felt back then, frightening and miserable and mostly done for his dad’s sake. Not when it was so difficult to look at Svetlana without thinking of all the bad things, and not when he couldn’t even look at the kid without seeing it. At his baby-blue eyes, like Mickey’s but like Terry’s too.

“Sure thing,” Kevin says, and he touches Mickey’s shoulder too. Last time Mickey was here in Chicago, before it all went down, he would have shrugged that off. It’s too close and that’s uncomfortable. Too much of an acknowledgement of Mickey’s vulnerability. But today, he lets it go.

“A refill then?” he says. At least that makes Kevin pull his hand away.

*

In the end, Kevin doesn’t even come by. Instead he sends Mickey an email with the address and the phone number too. It’s a landline and when he calls it, it’s Svetlana’s voice who introduces the voicemail. To hear it sends him back to the past, a jolt that startles him long enough for the beep to come and go. When he notices he hangs up, but he knows he’s late enough that they’ll have gotten a breathy voicemail. He can’t really change that though. He’s already decided that it’s better to write than to call.

Over the next week or so, he labors over what to say. _I don’t even know if I am the dad. I know I went off to Mexico. I know I was never there. I don’t even know what I have to give. I’m married to Ian now._

When he thinks it’s good enough, he wraps it up to send it out. In the bottom of the letter he’s written his email and his number and a p.s. apologizing for the voicemail he accidentally left. He buys a stamp at the Kash and Grab which Linda still owns and then he sends it off. He hasn’t spoken to Ian about it yet.

*

While he waits for something to happen, life at the house goes on. They switch the rooms around, so it starts to make sense. Frank has still got his old one, but Mickey and Ian move into Fiona’s old room, and Mickey thinks about the responsibility that comes with that. He was always a little scared of her, this sister who was really a mother. He didn’t want to disappoint.

It leaves Carl and Liam the revolving boy’s room though, as Debbie stays in her childhood one with Franny. Some days Sandy is there too, and after a while Mickey stops being surprised when he wakes up and finds Sandy in the kitchen in her boxers and Debbie’s t-shirt. It’s a little funny, he thinks, this Gallagher Milkovich thing, but then he thinks of Mandy and has to stop again.

He tried to call her in prison sometimes, but she stopped picking up. After he got out, he tried to call her on his normal cell, and it did go through to her voicemail, so he guesses her number hasn’t changed. He left her one, _I’m out now_ , but she hasn’t returned to him.

He thinks of the past a lot, and then thinks maybe that’s a marriage thing. Ian talks of Monica more often these days anyway, in a way that’s less fear for himself and more just grief. Their lives are all new, the next stage, so maybe it makes sense. Maybe it’s even a good thing. A sort of dealing with it.

On Tuesdays Debbie works late, so Mickey sits on the couch with Ian and Franny, who’s not sitting, but standing up on the cushions and jumping around. Ian is sorting his meds into his weekly plastic compartments, so Mickey puts himself in charge of making sure the girl doesn’t fall over and break her arm or some shit like that. Someone needs to anyway, because when she wants to go down, she just jumps, like it’s not a little dangerous. Sometimes Mickey marvels at the fearlessness of kids.

“Where you going?” he asks. But when he keeps an eye on her, she’s just heading into the storage space under the stairwell to pick out some of her toys.

“I want to play,” she says, and then she comes back with a handful of dolls. Mickey can already tell how this will go down, but he accepts the one she pushes into his hands anyway and smiles when she goes over to push at Ian’s leg.

“Ian,” she says, as Ian closes the lid of the medicine compartments. “Ian, Ian, Ian.”

”What?” he says.

“Ian.”

“What, huh?”

And then he grabs her to tickle her, the way that Mickey’s found she loves. At least it makes her scream-laugh in this delighted kid way.

“You want to play?” Ian says.

“Yes!”

“You want to play?”

And then she runs away from him in a way that means she wants Ian to follow, which he dutifully does, chasing her around the couch and then into the kitchen as she laughs. Ian has always loved kids and with all his siblings around, he’s also learned what to do with them. Mickey hasn’t, and he thinks about that, but then Franny comes running back in and crawls onto his lap, which interrupts him.

“No!” she yells at Ian, who’s coming in after her. She’s standing on Mickey’s thighs, arms around his neck to steady herself, and it hurts like a fucking bitch, but Mickey won’t stop her. “Mickey’s protecting me.”

“Is he now?” But Mickey can tell that Ian’s delighted by it.

“Yes, he is.”

“Alright, alright.” Ian’s hands go up in surrender. “Truce, then?”

“Truce,” Mickey huffs. “She doesn’t need that, she won.”

He knew that would delight Franny, and it does. Makes her jump up and down, chanting _I won, I won, I won_ , as Ian shoves his head in gentle retaliation. And Mickey has never known this before, but he’s beginning to think that that doesn’t have to mean he can’t learn.

*

The other thing he thinks about a lot is his dad.

He’s back in prison now, at least for a little while. It was easy to catch him for setting the wedding venue on fire, and easier to catch him still when he made their wedding night room explode. It helps a little with Mickey’s fear, which is hard not to feel. To be honest, though, he’s not sure what Terry actually intends to do. It’s not that he thinks Terry wouldn’t kill his own kid. It’s more that he’s not sure if he actually cares that much.

One Saturday morning, anyway, Mickey stands and looks in the mirror and thinks that maybe you’re beginning to be able to see it on him. When his hair is styled a certain way, and he’s wearing his denim jacket. His skinny jeans, his button-up. When he's walking next to Ian, for sure. When he does most things, because he’s never not gay, and these days that shines through. He said it years ago, and he still needs to say it now sometimes in order to remember that it’s okay. He’s gay. He’ll always be gay.

At night, Ian holds him. Even when it’s warm, like it is these weeks, he sneaks his arms around Mickey’s waist and holds on. He breathes out onto Mickey’s neck, and Mickey holds onto his hand where it’s lying over his chest.

In prison, they talked about breaking the cycle. There were two types of factors, risk and protective. Family neglect, inconsistency, physical violence, drinking. He ticks most of them off for himself but also for Ian, this guy who used to be a fucking determined teen. But then there’s the protective ones. Self-esteem, steady work, partnership. Maybe what they’re doing together is working it out.

He loves him, anyway. He has always known that, and eventually he stopped trying not to say it and started screaming it out instead, in the way that a Milkovich would. _I missed you, I love you, I thought of you. I’ll meet you there in twenty. I need to protect him. Are you okay? He’s got me, no fucking way, family. Can I go in with him?_ One night Mickey lies in the bed in the room that now belongs to them, watching it as Ian takes his t-shirt off.

“You brush your teeth?” he asks.

“Why, won’t you kiss me if I didn’t?”

“I kissed you in prison. I think we’re fine.”

That makes Ian smile, the way it seems to do whenever Mickey’s saying stuff that means love to nobody else but them. He takes his jeans off too, and then he gets on the bed in his boxers and holds himself up over Mickey.

“Do it then,” he says, in this warm, fond tone, and Mickey smiles. He reaches up for him with one hand, gently cupping his cheek, and when he reaches up with the rest of him, Ian meets him in the middle.

“Thank God we get to do this now. No prison guard in sight.”

“Well, Debbie acts like one sometimes.”

Ian laughs but stays close, on top of him and kissing his neck. It makes Mickey smirk. At least in the middle of everything, they’ve always known how to do this.

“Got something on your mind, Firecrotch?” he says.

“Just you.” As he says it, he kisses further down, over the stupid tattoo, and Mickey catches the drift of where it’s going tonight. He smiles. “It’s that fucking shirt, you know. Looks like the wedding one.”

“It isn’t.”

“But it looks that way.”

Mickey won’t argue, that’s for sure. Not when Ian is pushing the blanket down to the end of the bed. Not when Ian is doing this just because he wants him. Because he loves him back, like Mickey loves him.

After they’re finished and clean and back together in bed again, Ian lies on his side to look gently at him. He looks bright these days, and Mickey often marvels at it. He thinks that’s a given side-effect of loving someone through most of the big events of their lives. When they’re happy, you feel happy too, and Ian is happy a lot right now.

“You’re so good to me,” Ian says, with the kind of eyes that makes Mickey wonder if he’s talking about everything. Prison and Mexico and the two of them playing house, and maybe even that time when Mickey was pretending he didn’t care but kissed him still, when asked to. It’s almost funny, the way in which Terry fostered all of them to be skilled to hell in devotion when Mickey was always going to use it like this. Not snitches with stitches but a boy who would do anything to protect another boy.

He shrugs.

“Yeah, well,” is all he manages to say. Sometimes the true depth of his feelings are too much to say out loud and sometimes he doesn’t wake up with the right words to say. But Ian smiles anyway, and then he leans in to kiss him again.

“I’m happy, Mickey,” he says. And for most of Mickey’s life, that’s felt like the most important thing Ian could say.

*

It’s a Thursday, then, when Mickey checks his email and sees that Svetlana has written him back.

 _You are daddy to me_ , is the first thing she writes, and that makes him close to teary-eyed, the way he used to hate to get. Back in those strange and wonderful and horrible months in which they were all playing house, he almost came to like her, just as he thinks she almost came to like him. Maybe they were all a little fucked up then.

There are pictures attached to the email. _He is six. This year he will start school. This is him._ And there he is. A kid with Mickey’s eyes, God. A kid who looks just like him, except for the blond hair.

 _We have a good life_ , Svetlana writes. _He needs consistency._ She doesn’t write what she means by that, but Mickey knows it anyway. Don’t come running and then fuck this up. And she’s right. He doesn’t need to do this. He’s only in his twenties, and he never wanted this kid. He went through a rape to get him, and he can only think of that when he detaches it from everything else. No one is asking him to do this, not even Svetlana, even now when she knows he’s out. He might even be really bad at it.

He might, he might, he might. But he still can’t shake the feeling of wanting, at least, to try.

*

After that, he always keeps the email close. Sometimes when he’s alone he looks at it; in the breakroom at work, in the Gallagher backyard, in their bedroom when Ian is downstairs. He writes back that he understands and that he thinks they should take it slow, and Svetlana sends more emails back with more details about the kid. Mickey starts reading those over in secret too.

One afternoon, both Lip and Tami are busy and so the Gallagher house gets saddled with babysitting duty. Liam is busy with his homework though, and Debbie and Sandy are upstairs. Carl is out at work, and Ian is having a bad day, distracted and irritated and running on no sleep, so Mickey carries the baby around in the kitchen to get him to sleep.

Him and Lip are not each other’s biggest fans, Mandy baggage and everything, so Mickey doesn’t know how Lip would feel if he knew. Maybe he would doubt that Mickey even knows how to care for a baby, and to be honest he probably doesn’t, but for a while back then, he still did. Mickey remembers it now, as he tries to bounce Fred to sleep the same way he did to Yevgeny, smelling his baby smell like the one Yev had too.

Those months are a large part of what he keeps returning to. Maybe, he thinks, because he had been so cracked open then, the shells gone and him left without a protective shield. You can't cheat in a game where you don't know the rules, and Mickey has never been taught that emotions are manageable. He’s not like the Gallagher’s, used to hope being let down. Instead, his hardness falling away left him just as vulnerable as baby Yevgeny was.

Other times he thinks he returns to it all because of how scared he'd been, and how happy too, those two things twisting together like they weren’t on opposite ends of the table but permanently linked.

Him and Ian still haven’t talked a lot about it. The breakup, or his illness, or even the kid and the rest of the things that happened back then. Mickey is reminded of that most strongly in moments like these, taken back, or in moments like these, when it rears his head. When Ian has walked out of the house to run his own energy down.

_I love you. The hell does that even mean?_

They need to get better at this. At talking, for sure, and at solving their problems without using their fists. At knowing that they’ve got each other, especially now that there’s wedding bands on their hands. At not always smelling the fleeing wind on each other's coats. And maybe they will, because when Ian comes back home through the backyard to find Mickey sitting on the staircase with Fred, he stops in his tracks and tilts his head and then he comes closer.

“You babysitting?” he asks, as he joins Mickey on the same step, so they’re sitting close together.

“Everyone else is busy.”

Ian reaches out to touch the back of Fred’s head. A tender movement, full of love.

“I think I need to take a sedative,” he says. It’s surprising that he knows it and from what Mickey has heard, surprising that he admits it too. Part of the usual break-down is probably self-destruction.

“Okay," Mickey says. Ian looks at him.

“I need to sleep it off then. And to go to the doctor tomorrow.”

“Yeah."

Mickey nods.

“Will you come?”

He didn't expect that. And he knows Ian can tell, because Ian reaches out, hand to his cheek.

“I’m sorry, Mick. I’m sorry, it’s just that I hate it and I get so fucking pissed off. I don’t want to be like Monica, but I don’t want to feel out of control, and that’s how it feels to have to take these stupid meds. I want to know how to talk, but… I haven’t known without you here either, if that helps.”

“You mean with the other guys?”

He’s quiet. Mickey doesn’t mean to bring them up, but it’s difficult, sometimes, not to think of being left. Of standing there, after giving his absolute everything, and hearing Ian say that he did it all wrong. Of being caught and having the kid and choosing Ian anyway, of being scared and coming out and sitting in the car on the way back home. Of being alone in prison for years, of being left on the border of Mexico, and of turning up again just because he thought he was needed. Of doubting, just sometimes, that he’ll ever really be.

“Back then…" Ian starts, and then he stops again. "I know I have a lot of making up to do."

Mickey shrugs while Freddy coos.

"You didn't want to be with me anymore. It is what it is."

"No," Ian says, shaking his head. "Monica took me out."

"Fucking Monica."

"Yeah." They've talked about her before. Ian misses her, and he sometimes hates her too. That dichotomy is something Mickey is used to living with, so he's not confused by it. He knows that she messed those kids up, maybe Ian most of all. At least Ian looks a little sadly at Mickey now. "She thought the bipolar _was_ her. Always did, my whole life. She thought the medication was there to change you and take something away. That anyone who offered the medicine couldn't really love the whole range of her."

And then, with pointed eyes:

"Us."

_I love you. The hell does that even mean?_

"Well, sorry for giving a shit," Mickey says, but Ian smiles.

"Mickey," he says, in his warmest fucking tone. Touches to his shoulder and tilts head. "I was still depressed then. Actually, I pretty much hated myself, and I know in my family you always fight for each other, but you also really love the relief of giving up. It just felt right to let myself fall down, but I couldn't do that while you were there, waiting around for me to be okay."

"So I loved you too much?" Mickey says.

"Basically." But Ian's smiling now. "Don't you know it a little, though? _Warm mouth_ and everything? That when someone loves and you let them, that means you owe them shit."

And Mickey does, of course. Because isn't Ian right about this? Isn't that what Mickey was doing at the end of that wonderful summer? Fuck, isn't it what he did after they were caught, when Ian was desperately begging for him to acknowledge what happened to them? Isn't that the way he's trained? To push all love away.

"I squared up for you," he points out, because that's the other side of it.

"I know. You kissed me because I asked you to. I'll never forget that, long as I live."

Now Mickey's smiling a little. Ian does too, reaching out to brush his knuckle across Mickey's cheek.

"We're married, Mick," he says. "So if you don't break my leg again, I promise I'll stick around."

Mickey snorts, then smiles. If Ian is trying to lighten the mood, then things must be close enough to alright.

"You don't want to check if the fourth time's the charm?" he asks, but he's joking now, and not surprised about it when Ian shakes his head.

“No," he says. "If the third time wasn’t, it probably means I should take a hint.”

And stay. Mickey wants so badly for that to be true. He wants to hold it between his palms and nurture it there, like a baby bird or maybe just like a baby. Or maybe he like he nurtures this. The baby in his arms which belongs to Ian's brother and Ian's heavy head falling onto Mickey's shoulder. The night sky and the warmth of it.

“I have something to show you,” he says.

It feels like the right moment. Of course, love is always harder to receive than to give, but if he's sitting here and asking Ian to let him love him, then maybe he should open up the channel the other way too. So when he's found his phone and opened the emails, he hands it over and his wedding band catches the porch light as Ian's does too. He reads them over with furrowed brows which ease as he starts to understand. Then he looks up.

“You never told me,” he says, but accepts it when Mickey shrugs. He didn’t know how, and he thinks if anyone understands, it’s Ian. Ian goes back to the phone, anyway, and now he’s smiling as he scrolls through.

“His eyes,” he says. “They’re just like yours.”

“He could still be my dad’s.”

“Well. Lana doesn’t seem to think so.” That nickname that he always used about her, back then too. “And anyway, dad or brother. In this family’s that the same thing.”

“Or something,” Mickey says, because it’s not entirely true. If it was, he wouldn’t have seen Lip be the promise kid only to completely fail, he wouldn’t have seen Fiona drunk, and he maybe wouldn’t even have seen Ian try to leave. Those are issues you can only inherit from parents who were supposed to love you but didn’t, at least not well enough.

Ian is looking down, phone in his field of vision but eyes a little blank.

“Have you thought about it?” he asks. Mickey hates that he only needs to listen to the tone of his voice to understand what. But it is the way it is, and it is that way, so he nods.

“Quite a lot,” he says.

“So you have no obligation.”

“No.”

But he wants to anyway. Ian seems to understand. At least he smiles a little, and touches the back of Mickey’s neck before he pulls him in. Kisses his temple and holds him close, his warmth seeping over.

“I always saw him as ours, anyway. The three of us.”

Them and Svetlana. It’s a strange thought, but if Mickey’s honest then there were many moments of busy mornings and quiet evenings in those months in which he kind of did too.

*

At first, they talk on Skype.

After him and Ian’s talk, Mickey sends Svetlana an email with the update. _Ian wants to get to know him too._ So she writes back a date and a time and then there she is, through the computer screen that he's watching from the Gallagher kitchen table in the bright morning light. Her hair is shorter now, and the way she dresses makes Mickey think of the money he's heard she has now, but other than that she looks like herself.

“Where is carrot boy?” she asks, very first thing. Mickey smiles about it as Ian comes over with coffee cups, appearing within frame.

“Hey Svetlana,” he says.

“I hear about Gay Jesus thing. You will not blow up van around my boy." Mickey looks up at Ian, who's stilled a little. "I know you are sick, is okay. But no dangerous shit or I cut your dick off."

Mickey tries not to snort as Ian smiles.

"I thought your preferred weapon was a hammer?" he says.

"You agree?"

"Yeah, I agree," he says, as he finally sits down. "I'm on meds now, I promise. I won't put the kid in danger again."

"And no more leaving either. You have bad taste in men, except for baby daddy."

"Except?" Mickey says, a little surprised but mostly to draw the attention away from Ian again. Svetlana finally looks at him.

"He is asking about daddy now," she says. "I tell him about you, out of prison. He thinks is cool, I tell him no. You will also tell him no."

"Okay. Prison is bad, I got it."

“I tell him you are rainbow boy. He doesn’t care.”

“Good.”

“He is soft,” Svetlana says, and her whole entire voice changes with the words. Before it was kind of formal, a little bit strict, but now it is only warm, a golden summer sun. "Good boy. Kind to friends. He wants to hold hands. If he wants to with you, you will do it. No toughen up."

"No," Mickey says. The world has had enough of that for a lifetime, and so has he.

"And no hitting."

"I would never do that."

"No Terry shit."

"No."

They meet each other's eyes. Mickey thinks they can both tell that they're having the same thought. The one about everything that happened back then. About how they even got in this situation in which Mickey is a dad, but the other stuff too. The baptism that Svetlana invited Terry to, and Mickey at the Alibi after, yelling out his truth like a Pride march queer in order to get Ian to stay. The fear that she played until it became a fear that she started to help quell.

“You will tell Yevgeny where he is from?” she asks, and he can tell that the thought of it scares her. It could ruin a lot, probably. But Mickey doesn’t see the point of doing that to the kid, so he shakes his head.

“No.”

She nods, like she accepts it. And then she turns her head.

“Yevgeny!” she calls, out of the room. And that’s when the kid comes running in.

*

The Skype calls become weekly and suddenly it’s fall again. Mickey thinks about parenthood and he thinks about Mandy. He thinks about fucking Terry, and the way he fucked them up, and he thinks about Ian, who sits by his side in front of the laptop screen every single week on the dot, and who talks to Yevgeny so easily when Mickey runs out of words.

One Saturday morning he wakes up, arms cold above the duvet but back warm because Ian is plastered up against it. He can hear the creaks and voices of the other people in the house, but in here it’s just the two of them. Ian is awake, Mickey can tell, from breaths falling onto neck, but he's still here in the bed. Or at least back in it, assuming he got up to piss like always and took his meds. When Mickey turns onto his back, he adjusts his arm around him.

"Morning," he says.

"Shh." 

Mickey's eyes are still closed, but Ian's smiles are audible; breath out of his nose. It's also this: His hand on Mickey's cheek, and then a kiss.

"You taste of morning breath," he says.

"Blow me, then."

He laughs and Mickey smiles back. Closed eyes still, but he's not surprised when Ian leans in to kiss him again. And again. And again.

Later that week, they're having sex in the shower when Sandy comes by to knock on the door and tell them to stop using all the _fucking warm water, you assholes._ Mickey just tells her to fuck off, because the house is child-free and he'll be damned if he isn't going to use to the chance to expand their repertoire beyond the bed again. When they finally leave the bathroom, Sandy grins at him.

"Fuck, your face," she says, and Mickey flips her off although he knows what she means. Since they were teens, it's tended to leave him dazed. "Ian must be a God."

"Just husband duties," Ian says. Mickey smiles as he pulls him into their room to get back on him. 

Ian is good to him these days though. Mickey will fall asleep on the couch, and Ian will wake him up with fingers through his hair and a quiet, warm voice. Mickey will be tired after work, and Ian will too, but they won't be mad at each other. Instead they will chase each other around the house, and Mickey will laugh out loud and remember being a teenager, in over his head with love. They will go for a drink at The Alibi, and Ian will be a clingy drunk on the way back home, so Mickey will carry him there on his back. Nothing will happen to ruin it. Instead Ian will kiss his forehead drunkenly in the bed.

"For a good sleep," he says.

"Okay, Lightweight."

Ian just grins.

"Goodnight," he says. So sincere, in a pretty hilarious way, and Mickey fucking loves him.

"Yeah, okay you weirdo. Goodnight," he says. But Ian's already snoring, fast asleep.

So Mickey thinks of love and he thinks of happiness. He thinks of family and he thinks of how Ian is putting _staying_ on his resume. He thinks of settling in.

When the phone-call finally comes, it’s a cold November day. _Old, senile green card husband is dead,_ Svetlana says. Chicago is her next plan. And then it’s a cold December day when he’s standing at the airport to pick them up with Ian by his side. When his son takes one look at him and runs, _daddy daddy_ , and when Mickey gets to put his arms around his own child.

“Hello, little man,” he says, embarrassing tears in his eyes which only get worse when he sees Ian’s grin. Yevgeny wanted to get up, so Mickey has hoisted him into his arms even though he’s six years old and therefore quite heavy. If he can carry Ian through the streets on his back when they’re both drunk, he can sure as hell carry him. “How was your flight?”

“Long,” Yevgeny says. That makes everyone laugh. “But Mama says we’re staying here.”

“Yeah, you are,” Mickey says. “You lived here when you were a baby.”

“With you and Ian. Mama said.”

Well. In some capacity.

“Right,” Mickey says.

“Say hello to Ian, Genya,” Svetlana says, saving him from commenting more on that. “And then we will go. Eat. No cranky boy today.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Too bad.”

Mickey smiles about that as he puts Yevgeny down. He knows these fights now, even if Liam is ten, and he sees himself in Svetlana’s response. Maybe, if things had been different, they could have been friends. Same take-no-bullshit, matter-of-fact attitude.

“We can go to a restaurant,” he says, because that usually works, and also because he thinks they all deserve that now. Yevgeny, apparently a small saint, checks for Svetlana’s nod okay before he gets excited and takes Mickey’s hand. Mickey remembers Svetlana making him promise not to let go.

“Can we get pancakes?” he says.

“Pancakes is not food, kid.”

“Why not?” he says. “You eat it.”

“You also eat dessert.”

“But some people eat it for breakfast.”

“Rich people, maybe.”

“Mama and I are rich.”

A couple of people around them look their way, all smiling sweetly like the kid said a funny thing. Ian is grinning widely, and Mickey is trying not to laugh, but Svetlana is smiling a little too.

“Right, well,” Mickey says, and that’s how he ends up trying to explain blood sugar to a little kid. It’s fruitless anyway, because when they actually reach Patty’s, Yevgeny has decided that he wants chicken tenders. It turns out that six is older than Mickey thought, but it’s still so young, and he can’t quite stop thinking about that. Not when he remembers his own life and the way they’d all learned to take cover at that age. Not when he remembers all the rest.

How could you ever hit a child? And how could you ever hit a child that’s yours? He thinks of that all day, as Yevgeny sits by his side in the restaurant booth, acting like he trusts him and like that’s a natural thing. Like that’s what you do with parents, which of course is what you’re supposed to.

That night he sits down on the bed, drained like he’s never been before. He lies down, gets under the duvet, turns to the wall. When Ian comes in from the bathroom, he pauses for a moment before he puts his knee to the bed.

"Mick?" he says, quietly, but Mickey is quiet too. "You okay?"

He doesn't reply. Instead, Ian gets on the bed, and then up against his back, arm tight around him. He puts his lips to his shoulder. He holds him so close.

"I know," he says, a whisper, delivered like he does. "I'm sorry."

And that's the truth of it. The horrible fucking truth. So Mickey let's his last pretenses go and starts to cry.

*

They don’t move into the Gallagher house, because they’re rich enough to very easily find something else. Instead they get him enrolled in school, the three of them on his records as parents who are allowed to pick him up, and then it’s just begun.

It makes Mickey think of parenthood, and then of his own dad, who’s getting out soon. He’s wary of getting a gun with all the kids in the house, including little Fred who’s beginning to learn to crawl, but he gets one from Sandy anyway and locks it in a safe. Mostly he goes by legal means, which seems so useless it’s almost a little funny, but is worth a try anyway. A restraining order for himself and Ian and one for the kid. When he tells Sandy she laughs, but she also sits at the Gallagher kitchen table and worries her lip.

“We don’t even know if he will do anything,” Ian tries to argue one day, with him and Sandy and Debbie, who are all there in the kitchen. “He’s had plenty of chances to kill you before without doing it.”

“Before we were married,” Mickey says. “He probably thought there was still hope.”

“Then he’s a fucking idiot.” Mickey thinks they both remember getting caught. “But you’re right, anyway. I’m not banking on a plan that doesn’t assume the worst-case scenario.”

“Which is what?” Debbie asks. “Mass murder?”

“I guess,” Sandy says. “It’s happened before in history.”

“And what are we gonna do? Keep a gun out in the open for the kid to shoot himself? Use it, and end up in prison again? That’s not how I wanted to spend my married life.”

“You could get someone else to do it,” Debbie suggests. “A brother?”

“Fat chance,” Sandy says. “They’re all up Terry’s ass.”

“Sounds awfully gay.”

Mickey snorts about that, as Ian gets up for the coffee machine.

“Let’s talk about something else,” he says. “You’re stressing me out. Maybe I’ll go crazy again and put him in my next van.”

“You won’t. You’ll take your meds.”

“I would get a reduced sentence.”

“Not necessarily the second time. That’s not even an option Ian, okay?” But he knows that Ian would never. “The whole point is to protect you.”

“And you, surely.”

“Yeah, well.”

As Ian comes back with a full cup of coffee, he slaps the back of his head, _don’t be dumb_ , which Mickey maybe deserves for that. He’d do the same to Ian, who follows it up by leaning over the back of his chair and pressing a kiss to his cheek. Mickey is agitated from talking about this, and remembering Yevgeny makes it worse, both because he’s another concern and because of his status as Mickey’s kid when this is who Mickey learned from. A guy who spent his whole life trying to beat the gay out of him and who might do something worse now that he knows it’s too late. And Mickey won’t back out, because he’s not like that. A Milkovich keeps his promises. But sometimes he gets nervous thinking that him and the kid are doomed.

Ian knows, of course. They’ve always understood each other, and they’re getting better at it, so when Ian’s hand stays on Mickey’s shoulder, all heavy and warm, Mickey knows exactly what it’s meant to say.

“We have to pick Yevgeny up soon, anyway. School ends at one today.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Mickey says. And that’s that. Left unsolved.

*

In the meantime, as time passes, they keep playing house with all the kids. Frank is still drunk but in the house for the first time in a while. Lip and Fred are over most mornings, still, and add Debbie, Franny, Liam, Carl and Yevgeny to that, as well as the occasional visit from Kev and V’s twins, and suddenly it’s a full house. One morning Ian smiles at him after everyone’s left and tells him that it’s like being a Gallagher kid again.

Slowly, then, they get to spring, which means they get the pool out. Mickey remembers seeing this during all those years as a teen, but never participating in it. Now he’s there in his swimming trunks one afternoon with Sandy, Franny and Yevgeny, who’s sitting on his shoulders and play-fighting Franny who’s sitting on Sandy’s too. He’s bad at it which means he falls in the water a lot, but he loves it, scream-laughing every time. _Again_ , he begs as Mickey starts just dunking him. _Again_.

Mickey thinks of how he screams for that in the way only a kid who knows that daddy’s always got him could. Of how it’s fun to be scared but only when you never doubt you’re safe, the same way that watching a scary movie is fun with someone you love.

Later that day, at the kitchen table, he swings his legs underneath his chair and asks Mickey about being gay.

“How do you know?” he says. He’s seven now, soon ten, and before you know it, he’ll start to look for his own independence.

“I don’t know, kid,” Mickey says, because that’s the honest truth. “I guess you just do.”

“If you’re my dad and you’re gay, does that mean that I am too?”

“No, it’s not genetic. But I guess you could be.”

“What’s genetic?” Yevgeny asks.

“You have something inside you, called genes, which tells you who you are. Half of it comes from me” – at least most likely – “and half of it comes from you mom. But being gay is not in there. It’s just something that happens.”

“So you didn’t choose it?”

He almost laughs. If only he’d had a choice.

“No. I didn’t, kid.”

“Hm.” He seems to think about that, deep in thoughts as he gnaws on the carrot-stick Mickey gave to him. It’s this whole health thing, and honestly Mickey wants to encourage it too, but he likes that Ian brings it up so he can pin it on him when the others ask. “Would you, though? If you could?”

“I’d choose Ian,” Mickey says. Even with everything, for sure. And it’s funny because he knows it’s a romantic thing to say, and that if someone overhead it they would think of it that way, but that’s not how it is to him. It never has been. When he tells Ian that he makes him free, it’s just because it’s fact. When he tells Ian he loves him, it’s just because it’s how he feels. He doesn’t lie and he doesn’t dress it up, but he means it so deeply it could cut a wound.

“What happens if I’m gay too?” Yevgeny says, and Mickey thinks it’s incredible that he has a kid who isn’t too afraid to ask.

“Nothing,” he says. “Then you’re gay, that’s it.”

To say that is almost a kind of relief. The kind that makes Mickey smile at his feet when Yev turns back to his food. To make him think that maybe it’s true when people say that things will turn out okay.

*

So Mickey's a real dad, then. He thinks about that all the time, as he picks the kid up from school and takes him home with him. As he holds his hand in the street and kisses the top of his hair and sits at the Gallagher dining table, trying to help him learn the stuff they send him home from school. It's easy now, just first grade shit, but if it really all works out, there will come a time later in which he can't keep up anymore. Svetlana won't be much help either, so maybe the burden will fall on Ian, except that Ian's GPA is not exactly a beacon of light either. Of course, there might be Lip. 

One summer afternoon, a couple of months after Yevgeny and Svetlana came back, they have a movie night. Carl sits on the armchair, where Yevgeny crawls up to him, and Mickey sits besides Sandy with Franny on their laps. She likes them both a lot, in the sort of amused way you'd like an angry cat, or at least that's how Ian cheekily describes it to him one Sunday afternoon when she won't let him go. That night he's on the couch too, with Fred in his arms, while Debbie and Liam are sharing the second armchair. It kind of all fits.

Before he got to know all the shitty parts of it, Mickey took pride in being a Milkovich. He couldn't not; it was maybe the only thing he was ever raised to do. Then the sneaking knowledge of being gay crept up to him, and probably everyone else. Terry always beat them all, but he usually had a reason, mean but somewhat logical in Mickey's childhood mind. After he hit puberty, it started coming at all times, unprovoked, instead. Or not unprovoked. Homophobia's a reason, he guesses, even if it's a shitty one.

Things are different now though. Ian kisses him in front of his whole family, and Yevgeny always acts like Ian's his parent too. The Gallaghers are nice to him, holding him in their lap while a movie plays on the TV, making him breakfast and lunch, smiling when he draws them shit and putting it on the wall too. He takes a liking to Debbie and Carl, who Mickey still remembers as kids, and they take a liking to him too. He knows he's loved by everyone, and they're not a nuclear family, but they're still something good.

Eventually, then, it's been a long time of putting money aside, and as such things would have it, it starts to add up. On a rainy summer day, they go for a Gallagher family outing to the car dealership; him, Ian, Debbie, Sandy, Carl and Lip. It’s black and around half of the money to pay it comes from Mickey’s job, the other half from Ian’s, and it’s big enough for them all to get in. A real family truck.

Their first order of business is driving past the pharmacy to pick up Ian’s meds and also Debbie’s pill. Birth control is not exactly a common thing around this place but standing in the brightly lit place to pick them up reminds Mickey of being another time, begging it from other girls to sneak into Mandy’s room after the deal with the abortion. When he learned of what really happened, he was sure he would kill his dad, and thinking of it now makes him want the same thing. Mandy made him promise though. He guesses he was always too much of a bitch to do anything but what she said.

He thinks of it that night, though, the way he does sometimes, and then he sits on his and Ian’s bed with his phone. He dials the number and it goes to voicemail, the way it always does, but tonight Ian comes back in from his shower before he puts the phone down.

“Who you calling?” he says.

“Just Mandy.”

They’ve talked about it before. About Mandy being fuck knows where, and Mickey trying to call her like a fucking crazy person, always hoping for better even if it never comes. That’s the kind of thing he never would have done before, and the kind of thing that only being with Ian makes him do now. Ian nods quietly and sits down by his side.

“No response?” He shakes his head. “You know, I miss her too.”

Mickey looks at him and smiles, and Ian raises his hand to Mickey’s hair, brushing it out of his face. Sometimes he wears his fondness on his face like a skill, which Mickey thinks it is. Touches him like he knows how to say it just with that, which Mickey thinks he does. Leans in to kiss his forehead like a kid, like he does now.

Mickey would have stopped that before, and then for a while he longed for it. Sometimes he thinks it's kind of incredible how easily he’s got it now.

*

It’s not all easy though.

After the last time, the doctors adjusted Ian’s meds. Everyone talked about this when it all first began, so it shouldn’t be a surprise how difficult it is to get this right. At Ian’s next lithium blood-test, his levels are too high, which means they have to adjust the dose. They turn it down and add a different anti-depressant and tell him to come back the next week. It would be fine. But the Thursday before that can happen, he shows up with Yevgeny at the store where Mickey works.

“You didn’t pick up your phone,” he says, and Mickey’s heart sinks.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, but Ian shakes his head. Mickey knows what that means.

It’s hard to see Ian like this. Not necessarily the low-level mania, although definitely that too. It’s more that Ian’s aware and that he’s so disappointed. Mickey can see it in his face today, defeated like he gets sometimes when nothing seems to work. And Mickey understands. Sometimes the trouble that Ian gets from his brain seems to be on a never-ending loop.

“Hey Yev,” he says to the kid. “Go play for a moment, okay? Stay within my line of sight.”

But Yevgeny just looks between them, worried eyes stuck on Ian’s face.

“It’s okay. I’ll explain later, I promise. You can go.”

So Yevgeny does, running off to the playground in the middle of the mall but doing so quite reluctantly. When Mickey turns to Ian, he recognizes the self-hatred on his face from before.

“You could have called Svetlana,” he says, to make him think of something else.

“And never see the kid again?”

“I would never let that happen.”

Ian just shakes his head, his face twisting in on itself as he drags his palm over it. Mickey knows him well, and he’s been there with the mania, and he knows that Ian hates this. That he’s probably running spirals in his mind, like a video tape, about his fault in everything.

“Hey,” he says, reaching out, but Ian steps back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “ _Fuck_.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I just…”

He runs his fingers through his hair, his whole body practically vibrating with it. From what Mickey has seen before, it’s usually a slower burn than this, sustained and reckless more than it’s mad, but he’s not sure that really matters if this is chemically induced.

“I didn’t think I should be alone with Yev,” he says. “I thought it was just this morning, but it’s gotten worse all day.”

“You don’t need to worry about it. We’ll go get ice-cream or something. Cheer the kid up.”

“No, I can’t Mick. I’m sorry, I’m in such a fucking pissy mood, I don’t want him to see me like that. You should take him out alone.”

“And what? Just let you go?”

“I’ll call Lip or something.”

“The fuck you won’t,” Mickey says. “No fucking way. I’m not letting you leave like that.”

“Yeah, I think you have to. You’ve got the damn kid, Mick.”

“I’ve also got you.”

“And I’m a grown adult.”

“Not really right now.”

“Well, fuck you then,” Ian says, and Mickey can tell from his voice that he means it right then. It’s not what he’s usually like, but it’s kind of reminiscent of last time. Often so irritable and pushing in a way that stops being fun. Calling Mickey a pussy or a coward or a faggot, busting his balls about staying silent to stay alive and hitting him at the dugouts when Mickey was only trying to help. 

“Ian,” he pleads now, so desperate not to go back to that. And at least at this point in their lives, that provokes some remorse in Ian. His face falls anyway, but not his resolve.

“Please, Mick,” he says back. “I don’t want to fight with you, but I need to be somewhere else.”

If that isn't the most heartbreaking thing to hear. But Mickey can't do much about it because Ian is right: He's got the kid. So he gives in instead.

“Okay.”

After Ian has gone, Mickey gives himself a minute to re-compose himself. Then he moves towards the playground to pick Yevgeny up again.

“Where’s Ian?” he says, when Mickey is there.

“He went to be with Lip.”

“He was acting a little strange.”

“Yeah. You remember that thing we talked about?”

“That Ian is sick?”

“Mm-hm.” And Mickey needs to remind himself. That Ian is sick. That it’s only that, even when Mickey struggles with feeling useless and cast to the side and utterly stupid for him. “He takes medication but it’s off right now. He’ll be better soon. Maybe a little sad at first, but his family and I will take care of him.”

“And me?” Yevgeny says. “I want to cheer him up if he’s sad.”

“And you,” Mickey says, but he has to wipe his palm across his face, so the kid won't see him almost cry. _Fuck_. “We can do that. If your mom is okay with it, anyway.”

“Mama loves Ian,” Yevgeny says.

“Right.” But she doesn’t love this. Instead of saying that, he holds his hand out for the kid’s hand. “We’ll figure it out. But right now, we’ll go talk to my boss, and then maybe we’ll go get some of those pancakes you’re always begging your ass to hell about.”

“Really?”

He looks so happy.

“Sure. Why not?”

At least that makes one of them smile today. Right now that seems like a win.

*

Before they leave, he calls Lip to make him keep an eye out. At the restaurant he tries to engage while the kid speaks to him, but really, he’s thinking of Ian, out the fuck knows where and doing the fuck knows what. He tries to remind himself that Ian’s better these years, and that one bad day is not the same as a full episode, and that Ian is fully aware that he needs to go to the doctor tomorrow, but it’s hard not to let the old worries resurface anyway. When he finally gets to drop Yevgeny off at Svetlana’s and head home, he feels thin with relief.

“Ian,” he says, when he comes through the Gallagher front door. Only Debbie, Franny and Carl are to be found on the couch, though. “You seen him?”

“He’s in the yard.”

Mickey keeps his jacket and his shoes on as he stalks towards the backdoor.

“Hey Crazy-head,” he says, in the warmest voice he can muster, when he opens it to find Ian sitting on the stairs. It’s cold out here and Ian’s not wearing a jacket, but Mickey remembers how he ran hot the last time too. “Or will that nickname earn me a punch today?”

“How’s Yev?” Ian asks instead of responding, but it's good enough that he's even saying anything.

“He’s fine," Mickey says. "Actually, we had pancakes so he's pretty over the moon.”

That makes the corner of Ian’s lips tug up just a little. Mickey takes that to mean that the coast is now clear and sits down besides him.

“How are you?” he says. He knows that he's using that caring voice that he can’t fucking shake when Ian's like this, not even when Ian gets irked by it. In response, Ian holds up an orange plastic bottle, just two pills inside.

“I got these," he says. "They’ll make me a zombie for a couple of days, but at least I’ll be normal, right?”

“Is that a stab at me?”

But Ian doesn’t answer. Instead he hides his face in his hands and starts to cry.

Shit.

“Hey,” Mickey says immediately. "Hey."

He touches Ian's arm.

"It's okay, Ian," he says, using his name the way he only does when it’s serious. When he's trying to speak of love which he is now, holding him, palms on his shoulders and face to his back which shakes beneath his chin. He's got tears in his eyes too, but he doesn't wipe them off. This is what he'll always be: A guy who will go to hell and back for this. "You'll be a zombie, fine. I’ll make you food and you’ll try to eat. It will pass in a couple of days, right? That’s better than a couple of months.”

But Ian shakes his head.

“I hate this fucking shit," he says.

"Yeah, I hate it too." Mickey's voice is all croaky on the words when they come out. "But I love you."

_I love you. The hell does that even mean?_

"Even now?" Ian asks.

"Yeah, you fucking idiot. That shit never stops, okay? You've got my ring on your finger." Ian smiles a weak smile, and the pure relief of seeing it makes Mickey's strength break. "Ian, just don't fucking push me away. Tell me to leave you alone for a minute if you have to, I'll sleep on the couch, whatever. Just..."

_I love you. The hell does that even mean?_

Ian looks at him now, touching his chin.

"Mickey."

They lean in at the same time. It's a little wet, and very weak, but still. Light breaks through.

"I don't like to break your heart," he says, when they pull apart.

"Don't worry. It's more my own shit than it's you."

"Well, that's a fucking lie." They both smile about that, a little incredibly. Then Ian looks at the bottle of pills, and unscrews the lid of it. "I don't really want to do this."

"I know," Mickey says. Because he does know, because they've talked about this. It's hard to know that you need medication to be alright. It's hard to keep trying and still watch it fail. But it's also hard to watch someone you love not help themselves, and because Ian grew up with Monica, he knows that too. So maybe that's why he looks at him and takes them anyway.

He's a complicated boy to love. Sometimes he's a black hole, and sometimes he seems to be the only person in the world who's walking with the living. He's stubborn as shit, and he's rarely afraid to piss Mickey off or to tell him that he's pissed. He knows how to go after his goals, and he knows how it feels to fail. He's good to the people he loves, and charming to strangers when he wants to be, and he's been in love with Mickey since he was fifteen. That night, when they get into bed, he turns to look at him.

"Mickey?" he says, in the moonlight.

"Yeah?" Mickey says.

"I know what it means."

*

Because Svetlana was nice, Mickey gets to make good on his promise. A day later, then, when Ian is still in bed, she drops Yevgeny off. He’s made a drawing for Ian, and on top of all the other shit, that does actually manage to make Mickey cry. It’s over quickly though, because it kind of has to be.

The kid gets ten minutes and then Mickey draws him back out of the room. Lip is around now, sleeping on the fucking couch and walking with Fred in the backyard, and Mickey is so overwhelmed that he dumps Yevgeny on the living room floor with Franny and Debbie to go outside. To sit on the staircase and have a smoke. From the garden, Lip looks at him, looking fucking stupid with the baby on his stomach. Like some hipster, try-hard dad which is probably what he’s trying to be. At least they’re all trying.

“You doing okay?” Lip asks. Mickey just shrugs, so Lip keeps walking around, bouncing the baby up and down, as Mickey slowly finishes his smoke. When it’s down to the stub and turned out, Lip joins him on the stairwell.

“I remember when Liam was a baby,” he says, his hand on Fred’s head so Mickey knows they’re talking about him. “It never seemed this hard.”

“Maybe you just care more.” That’s the damn problem in Mickey’s life anyway. “And anyway, crying just means that he expects to be taken care of, right?”

“It can also be pathology, they say.”

“Yeah, well.” Mickey shrugs. “I’m not a baby guy.”

“You had Yevgeny.”

“And I wasn’t exactly father of the year, back then. Not that I am now.”

“You’re trying,” Lip says. “You’re doing alright. At least you don’t need to attend a fucking parenting class.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Mickey, you told the kid about this shit beforehand. He’s not even scared. He understands what’s happening, and that’s fucking great. You have to idea what kind of difference that can make.”

“Tell that to Ian, won’t you?”

“He’s not thinking right, right now. He’s depressed, so he’ll say depressing shit.”

That makes Mickey smile. In this last year or so, him and Lip have started getting along. It's weird to know what to say to make each other smile. But Lip keeps looking at him.

“You know," he says. "Sometimes when I feel sorry enough for myself that I kind of want to self-destruct, I think about you.”

Mickey scoffs.

“Why, because my life’s been so shit?”

“No. Because you handle it. Ian got sick, and you dealt with it. You were handed a baby you didn’t want.” So Ian has told him enough. Mickey always wondered if other people knew. “You dealt with that too.”

“Well. I didn’t grow up like Fred.” And maybe, when he’s saying that, he’s talking of Mandy too. “People didn’t come if I cried.”

“You didn’t have a Fiona.”

“I didn’t even have a Frank. I guess I had an Ian sometimes, as a teen, but that was pretty much it.”

Lip smiles about that, and quietly shakes his head.

“My crazy little brother,” he says.

“ _Hey_.”

“Because of you, I mean. The first time he told me about you, I thought he’d gone mad.”

“Most people did, I think.”

“But now you’re his best choice.”

It surprises Mickey to hear that, from Lip of all people. But then again, Lip was the one who kicked the wedding planning back into gear. Maybe being forced to look his own flaws in his eyes did something good for him. Dismantled his ego enough for him to look into Mickey’s eyes now, and acknowledge the fact of their shared love for the sad, sleeping boy upstairs.

“What about the others?” Mickey says.

“They were nice. But never you.”

And he’s not one to falsely flatter, so Mickey lets that sink in. It’s good to be reminded of when he feels like this, utterly useful as both a husband and a dad. It’s good to remember his past, which has always been the same. Refusing to back down from being there for the people he loves.

Back in the house, he sits down on the couch and lets Yevgeny crawl to him. He invites him into his lap and presses his face into his hair and inhales the smell of his shampoo, remembering doing the same thing when he got him back in the hospital after Ian had run off. He smiles at Debbie who’s sitting with Franny and looking up at him.

“Thanks for looking after the kid.”

But Debbie just shakes her head.

“He’s family, Mickey. Just like you.”

*

So a week of slow days passes then. Three days after it all went down, Ian goes to his doctor to get the new adjustment and everyone in the house hopes that this one’s the right one. Mickey tries not to blame himself for the rapid cycling by remembering that it was like this when he wasn’t there too, and that in some ways this is the best it’s ever been. He also tries to still go out, to work and to dinner with Yev. In short, he’s trying to stay sane.

One evening he sits by Ian's side on the couch, while Ian slowly eats the sandwich he made for him. Yevgeny is there too, and that's for Ian's sake. _It's normal_ , they're trying to tell the kid. _He's sick, but it's not scary. You'll never not be safe._

Ian is still quiet most days, the zombie mood of a recent medicine adjustment. Tonight he's picking the crusts off his food while he's sitting there, blank eyes and childishly crossed legs. He's downstairs though, and Mickey thinks of that as he holds Yevgeny against his side, brushing fingers through his tangled-up hair. 

"Tea?" he asks Ian, when Ian is done with the food. Ian moves his head in what counts for a nod these days.

"Okay."

So Mickey goes to make it for him. When he moves from the couch, it jostles Yevgeny a little, waking him up just enough to look around himself, before he crawls to Mickey's deserted spot and rests his little head in Ian's lap instead. From the kitchen doorway, Mickey can see Ian smiling down at him, raising his hand to brush through his hair the way Mickey was doing before. And then he can see it as Ian's face contorts. Silent tears. As he lowers his head to Yevgeny's shoulder and holds it there, breathing him in.

Mickey turns away from the doorway to leave them alone with it. When he comes back in a little later, Yevgeny has fallen asleep.

"He's like you," Ian says. His voice has that tired, barely-used sound to it, but at least he's saying something. "Head barely needs to hit the pillow before you're out like a light."

"Well, maybe it's you," Mickey says. "You're good at making us feel safe."

That makes his face contort again, but Mickey knew it would. It's not the horrible kind which makes him want to swallow his own breath and drown in it. It's just a few of them, down his cheeks and gone again. Ian wipes them away and looks at him, smile on his lips so weak that it's barely there, but it is.

"You're so romantic," he says. Really, he whispers it. Mickey reaches up to smooth his hair behind his ear, fond.

"Yevgeny loves you," he says.

"And I loved Monica."

"Yeah."

Mickey knows that he did. She fucked him up of course, in a way that means that the kids are Ian's biggest concerns. Not just Yevgeny, but Franny too, and maybe Liam a little bit. And maybe that makes sense, anyway; Mickey has heard the stories. Of her coming back all happy, manic and close to the peak. Of her saying she'd clean the rug and never doing it, of her buying the kids toys with money that she stole from them. Of slitting her wrists while they were all there, eating in the living room, dragging them out of their lives like teeth and leaving their bodies mangled like the long, bloody roots. But Ian also loved her. The way a son loves his mom.

There's a part of that feeling that's worry, Mickey is aware. That Ian might be the same, because of that love for her. Or that Ian will do the same, to Yevgeny or the other kids or even to Mickey himself. But there's also a part of it that's just terrible love. The kind that means that death is hard, and grief is even harder. Everyone's scared to become their parents. And everyone has to deal with the terrible fact that they love them still. Or loved them once.

In May, Terry gets out of prison again. Mickey doesn't see him for a while but then, one afternoon, he finds himself in The Alibi, trying to get Frank to come notarize his signature to some of Liam's school shit, when he walks in. Their eyes catch on each other, but they've never been further apart.

"You still a faggot?" Terry asks, this mixture of hard and nonchalant.

"I'm even a married one."

He moves as if to hit him, but Mickey steps away.

"I'll kill you," Terry says.

"You keep saying so."

"You know Terry, you might consider holding your horses," Kevin says. "Mickey's a Gallagher now. You know that means it's a death sentence to hurt a single hair on his head."

"Bullshit," Terry says, but Mickey knows that it's not. So when Terry grunts and sits down at the counter instead, he thinks that they both know what it means. "Get me a fucking beer, then."

Mickey is out of his life. Cut off from being a Milkovich, which he used to think would kill him, because what else did he have to be? But that question isn't all that hard to answer anymore.

When he comes home, he's barely inside the house before Ian is patting him down. 

"Who blabbered?" he asks, but lets Ian do it without complaints.

"Kev called," he says.

"I'm fine. Terry didn't do shit."

"This time," Ian says. But Mickey shakes his head.

"Never, I think," he says. While Ian looks at him and lets the implications of that sink in, Mickey jostles him a little to fish out the paper for Liam and hand it over to him. If anything's a rite of passage in this house, then cajoling Frank into doing your bidding would probably be it. Liam's eyes grow big.

"You were there because of me?" he says.

"Don't worry, Private School. You needed to go on that trip, right?"

"I wanted to."

"In this house, those two things should be the same."

By Liam's side, Debbie smiles. Ian does too, when Mickey turns back to him. Like he knows.

"So everything's okay?" he says.

"Yeah. Everything's okay."

*

And life goes on, as always. The medication adjustment makes Ian all nauseous and for a good couple of weeks he walks around the house like he’s got goddamn morning sickness. Mickey takes to buying a lot of toast because he’s heard that it helps an upset stomach, but in the grand scheme of things, it feels like things are going alright.

One evening, Svetlana comes over to eat dinner with them. At first Mickey doesn’t really know what to talk to her about, but they start out with the kid and then suddenly it’s going on quite nicely from there. Debbie joins them for after-dinner beer, and Mickey learns of the apparent womanly bond they shared when Mickey was in prison, whatever the fuck that means. He stops paying attention and hooks his ankle around Ian’s under the table instead.

In June him and Ian go for a night-time walk and end up at the dugouts just for old time’s sake. They’ve brought a couple of beers, and tonight they lie out on the grass instead of hiding behind the fence, looking at the stars like Mickey used to think they never would. Ian looks so happy in a real, non-manic way, and after kissing Mickey good and sweet for a while, he lies on his side and raises his head in his palm to look at him.

“You know,” he says. “That first time you were in juvie and I came to visit and told you that I missed you, you smiled. You tried to hide it, but I saw it, and I lived on that the whole fucking spring until you got out and I could finally touch you again. Right here.”

“I remember,” Mickey says, because he does, so clearly. He didn’t want to feel it then, but God if that summer wasn’t good. He was horny all the time, the way that only a roughed up teenage boy can be, and he spent so many hours just having sex with him. And having more than that. It turns out, showing up at the same kid’s door every day to be fucked good was basically the same thing as falling in love with him. And then it was the same thing.

“Yeah, I know you do.” Ian is smiling about it. “That night, over there, we shared a beer, and I remember feeling so giddy because it felt like a kiss. I thought about it for days. My fingers brushing yours when you handed me the smoke.”

“You were really fucking horny.”

“I was crushing hard on you. And I thought you were so hot.”

Mickey laughs.

"Yeah, well, you were one pushy fucker."

“True. But you always gave me more, even if it was slow. I knew when I asked you to kiss me you eventually would.”

Because Mickey’s weakness has always been this. A boy with carrot hair who wasn’t afraid to ask for it.

He was always so scared back then, and he certainly had a right to be. If someone shows you that what you are is worth a fatal beating when you’re thirteen years old, it’s hard not to spend the rest of your teens trying to swallow it down. And God, did he try so hard. For a while he even regretted it, but now he thinks he sees it for what it really was. He needed to do it to stay alive. And to stay alive, he needed to have hope. For something like this. So maybe that’s what Ian gave him that day when he came in with the tire iron in his hand. The image of what Mickey might get one day if he managed to stick around in his own life and survive until then.

In a way, you could say it saved him. In a way, it’s not just in a way.

The next time he sees Terry then, him and Ian are at the grocery store. One moment he’s looking at the cereal, the next he’s meeting his father’s eyes. None of them move or react, although Terry looks pissed. Even more so when Mickey raises his arm to Ian’s shoulders, defiantly staring him down.

“Should we do anything?” Ian asks, steady by his side. But Mickey shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “He’s leaving.”

And Terry actually does.

So then, when summer ends, Lip and Tami finally finish most of the renovations on the house, which means they all come over to help with the paint. Mickey puts Yevgeny in one of the old, worn Gallagher shirts and shows him how to help with the panels before he leaves him be, fetching two beers and joining Svetlana’s side instead. Kev and V are there too, and once Mickey learned that no one’s going to be acting weird, he started to find it quite hilarious. He’s smiling now.

“You okay?” he asks her, handing her one of beers.

“Is not funny,” she says, but she takes it anyway.

“It is a little bit.”

She hits his chest, and he laughs. But since that evening where she came over to eat, he’s been feeling closer to her, a sort of memory of playing house in the place he grew up but without all the bad shit. He thinks, at least, that of any of the people in his life now, she’s surprisingly the one who’s most on his own wavelength.

“Look,” he says to her. “If you want to be around more, they’ll just have to get over it. The kid is family and that means that you are too.”

She looks at him, at that.

“I am family with carrot boy?”

“Aren’t you a little bit?”

She hums, not replying, but he thinks she remembers. She drinks her beer anyway, and when Ian comes over later, she puts her arm around him like she sometimes used to do.

“We are team, carrot boy?” she asks.

“Sure,” Ian agrees. “What do you need me for?”

“Mickey thinks is funny.”

“What?”

“Kev and V.”

It’s Mickey who says it, and after he has, he gets the pleasure of watching Ian try to smother a smile.

“A little funny,” he says, and kind of like she did with Mickey, Svetlana slaps the back of his head. He only laughs though, and later the three of them are standing together as Yevgeny comes running up to them, hugging Svetlana’s leg.

“Mama,” he says. “I want to show Franny a video.”

“Too much screen,” Svetlana says, but she buries her fingers into his hair and ruffles it a little bit and nods when he tells her _please_. He always uses Mickey’s phone, so Mickey hands it to him and ruffles the kid’s hair too before they send him off. They all smile after him.

That night, then, Mickey drives him and Svetlana home. He falls asleep on the backseat of the car, way too big for three, and Mickey smiles at the image in the rearview mirror. At Svetlana’s apartment complex, he goes to unbuckle the kid and carry him up to the fancy apartment and then to his own bed. He takes his shoes off him, gets him dressed for sleeping, and tugs him under the duvet. He kisses his forehead and knows that everyone will be okay.

"I love you," he says, even though the kid is not awake. It's more about the saying it out loud anyway. Before he leaves, he lets Svetlana kiss his cheek goodbye, and then he gets on the road home to Ian and their bed. He's in it, shirtless and half asleep, but not quite. When Mickey slips under the duvet, he hums. 

“Your feet are fucking cold,” he says.

“Well, make room under the duvet then. Fucking furnace.”

Ian smiles.

“Come closer," he says. And Mickey does.

*

In the end, it’s both quick and pretty un-dramatic. He gets a call from Iggy and he picks it up knowing what kind of news it has to be. Why else would any of his brothers call?

It was a heart attack, apparently, and it killed him on the spot. Iggy is throwing a funeral, but Mickey won’t come, and when he talks to Sandy in the Gallagher kitchen she tells him she won’t either. Instead he sits on the backyard stairs that night and dials his sister’s number to tell her that her dad is dead. And then he sits on the backyard stairs as his sister finally calls him back.

“Mickey,” she says. And he smiles.

“I’ve got so much to tell you,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> is it really a mickey fic if it's not a little sad? answer that question and more in the comments for the cheap price of nothing. or maybe just tell me what you thought. i'd love to hear from you!
> 
> also follow my [tumblr](https://himick.tumblr.com)


End file.
